[SWIFT is the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, is the financial network that provides high-value cross-border transfers for members across the world. It is based in Belgium, but its board includes executives from US banks. USA has a peculiar – unacceptable in multilateral and bilateral agreements, and illegal anywhere outside territorial USA – set of ‘laws’ that give the government of the USA permission to act against banks and regulators worldwide if they are seen to obstruct US foreign, defence or economic policy. SWIFT supports most interbank messages, connecting over 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries and territories.]

The news agency report adds: “Washington has been pressuring SWIFT to cut Iran from the system as it did in 2012 before the nuclear deal. Although the United States does not hold a majority on SWIFT’s board of directors, the Trump administration could impose penalties on SWIFT unless it disconnects from Iran.”

IT IS A MEASURE OF THE PHANTASMAGORIA that rules international relations today, that a pretend-country – one which observes only the law of the gun within its borders and uses its remaining power to impose the same kind of primitive law without – with a pretend-government, has given itself the right to label another country a ‘rogue state’.

This pretend-country is the USA, and in its macabre language, a ‘rogue state’ is any country that neither bows to the USA nor submits to its diktats and intimidations, nor permits entry to the USA’s corporations and banks, nor uses the American dollar as its medium of international exchange. There are still in 2018 a number of countries or nation-states which are neither parliamentary as the Anglo-Americans prefer, nor democracies as the Western Europeans imagine themselves to be. This does not make them “rogue states”, for that label should properly be affixed to just the one pretend-country ruled by a pretend-government: the USA.

The Islamic Republic of Iran does not have a military base in the USA, nor in any country near the USA. On the other hand, the pretend-government of the USA maintains 12 military bases in Iraq, 8 in Kuwait, 6 in Afghanistan, 2 in Bahrain and 2 in Turkey, that is, all around Iran. This is how the pre-eminent rogue state threatens and seeks to intimidate other countries.

This is the background against which a remarkable joint editorial published on 15 October by the editors of four of Iran’s leading newspapers must be considered. The four newspapers – Iran, Hamshahri, Etelaat, and Sazandegi – decried the reimposition by the USA of what are called ‘sanctions’ (a misuse of the word that has become commonplace, the correct words should be embargo or blockade) as a violation of the ‘unalienable rights’ of the Iranian people to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’, quoting in fact from the American Declaration of Independence which has long been consigned to ashes in the USA itself.

The joint editorial has as its immediate reference point the abandoning by the USA in early May 2018 of the six-party Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) which was signed in 2015, granting Iran sanctions relief in exchange for the curbing of its nuclear activities:

“Whereas leaving JCPOA is a non-diplomatic immoral behavior, imposing tyrannical sanctions against a great nation will certainly be an antagonistic, discreditable measure. The US government claims that its sanctions are targeted on Iranian governance, not on Iranian people, while Iranian government believes that the sanction would come to no harm. However, we as the freethinker freestanding journalists with an attitude independent of any government believe that contrary to what governments claim, the US tyrannical sanctions have brought about destructive repercussions for the lives of millions of Iranian citizens who legitimately enjoy the right of life under optimal conditions.

“The US government obviously tells a lie when claiming that the sanctions are not imposed on the Iranian people. Indeed, the pressure and economic blockade of Iran have left harmful and in some cases, terrible impact on the life of Iranian people, not least the poor, entirely inconsistent with any reading of human rights. Difficulty in having access to medicine, drugs and medical equipments is an obvious proof for this statement that it is the people, children, women and men, who are actually targeted by blind sanctions, and so is when the price of goods are skyrocketed far beyond the purchasing power of ordinary people, and when the cost for health, education and even nutrition for the people are disproportionately increased, when many job opportunities are lost as the immediate effects of the sanctions on the industry and agriculture, all these subsequently provoke escalation of poverty among the households, and these households are just those who constitute Iranian people.”

Yesterday (16 Oct) the pretend-government of the USA blacklisted some 20 Iranian companies, including banks, steel mills, zinc mines, and manufacturers of cars, buses and tractors – on the spurious grounds that they support recruitment of child soldiers for Iran! As has been the practice of the pretend-government of the USA, it employs brazen lies to justify its intention to see destroyed those countries that do not pay it tribute. It lied about the so-called weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it has lied repeatedly about the use of chemical weapons in the Syrian conflict, it has supplied Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in their genocidal war against Yemen, it has lied to its own citizens about the origin of the 11 September 2001 attacks in the USA.

Resisting the usual attempts at arm-twisting by the pretend-government of the USA, earlier this month, the International Court of Justice ordered the USA to lift the sanctions on humanitarian goods and civil aviation, saying that they endanger civilian lives. The US “must remove any impediments” to the free exportation of food and medicines to Iran and to the safety of civil aviation, the ICJ said, to no avail however. As pointed out by Iranian experts on international law, the American withdrawal from the JCPOA and the measures it has taken to defy its implementation, the re-imposition of embargos and blockades on Iran and its commercial partners in the world, are a material breach of its international obligations and responsibilities.

It is the pre-eminent rogue state of the world (and its adjutant rogue state) which is the towering threat to peaceful and mutually beneficial co-existence, shared security, amity and understanding, sustainable development and the removal of impediments to the betterment of humans and the environment. Iran must have all our support.